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Today’s visitors

Visitors since 2009.4.1

Pageloads since time immoral

Here’s a superb snippet from a posting entitled ‘Funny Bits from Beijing Olympics’ found on the ‘Inside-Out China‘ blog. I’ve replaced the names to make the story a little more palatable, otherwise everything is as is.

Two Chongqing tourists Wu and Jin arrived at Beijing. On a bus, Wu looked at the map and said, “Lets first kill to Tiananmen, then Chairman Mao’s Memorial, then Zhongnanhai.” Jin answered, “Good, we’ll do what you said, kill all the way along this route.” (Chongqing idiom: “kill the way” 杀过去 means “go there.”) Alarmed Beijing passengers reported their dialogue to the police and the two Chongqing men were arrested as soon as they got off the bus.

After several hours interrogation and detention in the police station, they were released. Walking to the Tiananmen Square, the two men kept silent. They just looked at each other and sighed. At last, Wu said to Jin, “Why don’t you shoot?” Jin replied, “You didn’t shoot, why do I dare to shoot?” (Chongqing idiom: “shoot” 开腔 means “talk.”) Before they knew their arms were twisted by plain-clothe police.

A week later the two Chongqing men came out of the detention house. They looked at each other. Wu said, “This is good. My pockets are all empty. Where should we go to get some bullets?” (Chongqing idiom: “bullet” 子弹 means “money.”) The armed guards at the gate charged up and pinned them down on the ground.

Eventually, the Public Security Bureau issued a nationwide notice: “Chongqing idioms are strictly forbidden during the Beijing Olympics.”

Here, on the Seven Castles blogsite, is a list similar to one posted some time ago on this blog but more comprehensive with 130 criteria to help you sort out whether or not you have been in China for too long. Many of the conditions are old hat but some are quite delicious and raised a smile for me. Here are a few that applied to me before I finally made my escape . . .

4. You would rather wait on the street for an extra ten minutes for a small cab, than pay the extra for a big cab

7. You have absolutely no sense of traffic rules.

10. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose.

13. Other foreigners seem foreign to you.

21. You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle.

60. There are more things strapped to your cycle than you ever put in a car.

75. Forks feel funny.

76. The shortest distance between two points involves going through an alley.

Q: I’ve heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that’s it…don’t waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that’s like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruit and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism for delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Sheep are a good source of field grass (leafy green vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily intake of vegetable products.

Q: Is beer or wine bad for me?

A: Look, it goes back to the earlier point about fruits and vegetables. As we all know, scientists divide everything in the world into three categories: animal, mineral, and vegetable. We all know that beer and wine are not animal or mineral, so that only leaves one thing, right? My advice: Have a burger and a beer and enjoy your vegetables.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body, and you have body fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

The sports/activities/antics [delete as required] depicted on this page, each with a demo video clip, beat diving, dressage, and most other Olympic sports hands down. Shame upon BOCOG for not selecting wife-carrying [if you really think this is a time-waster just take a look at the prize] as an alternative event to hurdle racing and underwater hockey surely beats synchronised swimming every day of the week. Some of the names are self-explanatory, such as underwater hockey but others take a little thinking about. Ga-Ga for instance isn’t something that happens to grannies and granddads but is a form of Dodgeball, played in an octagonal pit. And for all the tired and jaded baseball watchers out there pesapallo is just what’s needed to turn a rather repetitive mediocre activity into genuine entertainment. No more neat and tidy circuits of the diamond to score, instead the players run an apparently random zig-zag route to make their points. It looks quite chaotic but apparently there are real rules [somewhere] and they are just as precise as those of the original game. Almost on a par with Extreme Ironing – now there’s real sport for real men [and women]. 🙂

Here is a posting worth reading. On the Frog In A Well blog is an article about some works of art by a Chinese artist, Yang Liu [or Liu Yang, depending on whether you prefer Chinese names westernised or in original order], currently on show in Germany. Each picture is intended to show differences between Chinese and German culture, which is why you see small Deutsch captions; in fact they could be said to illustrate differences between China and many western European countries, probably North America too.